Category: Health and Safety

Once I set myself to restore and refinish a mahogany (I think) door. I pulled it out of its hinges and placed it in a well ventilated outdoor area. I used one of those chemical paint removers, and, after a couple of hours, I had a nice shiny door ready for refinishing … and a terrible headache. What I …

Wycliffe Matthews, member of the Jamaican BITU, old hand at occupational health and safety matters and also a good friend, always talks about how important is for the island’s sugar factories to use signs and colours when aiming for more effective OHS systems. It’s much easier, he used to tell me, especially when you have …

Once I read on a Brazilian study that a cane cutter needs to do some 9,000 strikes with the machete (cane knife) to cut about 10 tonnes of cane.[1] In the video that accompanies this comment, the woman cane cutter strikes the cane 11 times in about 20 seconds, including those to …

It’s not common to find women as cane cutters. It is more common to find them in somewhat ‘invisible’ jobs, which are the result, on one hand, of being deemed low-skilled (and effectively low-paid) occupations, usually confined to field operations like planting, weeding and cleaning fields, and, on the other, that are jobs first to …

This Special Publication presents information on the activities on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) in the sugar industry in Kenya, developed by the IUF Global Sugar Program and the Kenya Union of Sugar Plantation Workers (KUSPW) in the context of the IUF Sugar Project in East and Southern Africa running from October 2007 to September …

Thirty-three delegates representing ten branches of the Kenya Union of Sugar Plantation Workers (KUSPW) gathered from 29 -31 August at the Tom Mboya Labour College in Kisumu to discuss KUSPW policy on Occupational Health and Safety Standards in the sugar sector, and to outline an action plan for the joint work of the IUF Global …

On 21 March this year, the IUF-Benin visited the sugar factory run by the Chinese company Complant in Benin (SUCOBE), located in the department of Save des Collines in Central Benin, and met with the Union of Sugar and Alcohol Workers (SYNTRASA). Their objectives were to observe conditions and the environment of work, to discuss …

From 30 July-3 Aug. 2012 the IUF-affiliated union, KUSPW, in coordination with Nzoia Sugar Company organized a five-day “train the trainers” workshop for leaders of the so-called Study Circles, an Advanced Course on Conflict Prevention Programme. A total of 16 worker representatives, which included four women, in addition to two management staff participated in the …